The present invention relates generally to RF link security of a wireless network. In particular, the present invention addresses limiting RF signal reception outside of a perimeter boundary to enhance security in a wireless network.
The deployment of wireless networks, particularly wireless local area networks (WLAN), in the small-office home-office (SOHO) environment has been quite successful in recent years. WLAN deployment in the enterprise, however, has not been able to replicate the success of WLAN in SOHO environment at least in part due to security concerns arising from the potential for RF leakage outside of a desired coverage area. Such RF leakage creates the potential for unauthorized communication devices (UCDs) to receive signals originating from the wireless network and to gain access to sensitive information.
Network equipment designers have implemented a variety of security protocols to prevent access by UCDs to a wireless network. These protocols include WLAN encryption, Internet Protocol (IP) encryption, and so on. These approaches assume that the signals from a wireless network are accessible to a UCD and attempt to make the content of those signals inaccessible and/or to prevent access to network resources. All of these data packet layer techniques, however, suffer from one or more shortcomings. Historically, encryption and authentication systems are constantly under attack and many are ultimately circumvented. Even without a real-time decryption capability, an UCD may be able to access a wireless network, record critical corporate information and use more powerful computing resources to decrypt the stolen data at a later time.
What would be useful, therefore, is a system and method for reducing the probability that a signal from a wireless network will be received by a UCD outside of a perimeter boundary by jamming signals attributable to the wireless network.